Copyright, Larry Press, August 26, 1991, do not reproduce or quote without
permission. This file may be forwarded around the net as long as this note is
attached.
A Computer Network for Democracy and Development
Larry Press
"Oh, do not say. I've seen the tanks with my own eyes. I
hope we'll be able to communicate during the next few days.
Communists cannot rape the Mother Russia once again!"
This message was sent from Moscow at 5:01 AM on August 19. It was written by
26 year-old Vadim Antonov, a senior programmer at the Demos Cooperative in the
Soviet Union. Demos operates a computer-based communication network which
spans the Soviet Union, and within a few hours, Vadim's message had been
relayed to computers in 70 Soviet cities from Leningrad in the West to
Vladivostok in the East.
The message had also been sent to a computer in Helsinki Finland, which is
connected to the non-Soviet computer networks. From Finland, the message was
relayed to networks such as The Internet, serving millions of users on all
continents. Seconds after it reached Finland, I could read it at my computer
in Los Angeles, California. The message was particularly important to me
because the week before the coup attempt I had been in Moscow and spent several
days with Vadim and his colleagues at Demos. We met professionally and as
friends.
Demos' RELCOM (RELiable COMmunication) network celebrated the first birthday of
its link to Finland on August 22. During that first year, RELCOM spread to 70
Soviet cities, and over 400 organizations were using it -- universities,
research institutes, stock and commodity exchanges, news services, high
schools, politicians, and government agencies. As is typical with computer
networks, noone knows how many users RELCOM actually reaches.
During the Coup
During the days of the coup, RELCOM was pressed into service in support of the
constitutional government. The junta moved quickly to control mass media.
When I learned of the coup, I immediately sent a worried message to Vadim's
wife Polina Antonova, who also works at Demos. I did not receive her answer
until August 20 at 12:17 AM Moscow time:
"Dear Larry,
Don't worry, we're OK, though frightened and angry. Moscow is
full of tanks and military machines -- I hate them. They try
to close all mass media, they stopped CNN an hour ago, and
Soviet TV transmits opera and old movies. But, thank Heaven,
they don't consider RELCOM mass media or they simply forgot
about it. Now we transmit information enough to put us in
prison for the rest of our life.
Greetings from Natasha.
Cheers,
Polina."
The Demos staff had learned of the coup around 6 AM on the 19th, and
immediately began sending political information to the Soviet Union and the
outside world. By 12:30 PM, Moscow time, I was reading news releases from the
independent Soviet news agency Interfax. Although outlawed by the junta, news
from Interfax, the Radio Moscow World Service, the Russian Information Agency,
Northwest Information Agency (Leningrad), and Baltfax was disseminated by
RELCOM throughout the coup attempt.
RELCOM also distributed news from official sources opposed to the coup. For
example, a copy of the letter Boris Yeltsin read from a tank turret in front of
the Russian Parliament building was brought to Demos headquarters (a short
trip), entered into a computer, and forwarded across the network. By early
evening, several people in the United States had also translated it, and an
English-language version was broadcast to the non-Soviet networks.
There were also many eye-witness reports. Pay phones were working in Moscow,
and people in the streets could phone news in. At one point, Polina told me
she was leaving for the Russian Parliament Building with a portable computer so
she could report from there. Later I learned that she had not gone because the
phone service to the building was unreliable.
Of course all the news did not come from Moscow. The network was buzzing with
reports and official notices from Leningrad, Kiev, the Baltic capitals, and
many other Soviet cities.
News also came in from the West. I wrote regular summaries of the news as
broadcast on radio and television in the United States. Jonathan Grudin, a
colleague in Denmark, did the same for BBC news. Regular reports were also
posted from Finland, giving both Finnish and Baltic news summaries. These were
translated into Russian by Polina and others, and transmitted throughout the
Soviet Union.
Western news was welcome, but the link to Finland became a bottleneck. Before
the coup, 6,000 messages were passed between Finland and RELCOM on a typical
day. After the coup began, traffic increased substantially, prompting Vadim to
broadcast this message at 6:44 PM on the 19th:
"Please stop flooding the only narrow channel with bogus messages
with silly questions. Note that it's neither a toy nor a means to
reach your relatives or friends. We need the bandwidth to help
organize the resistance. Please, do not (even unintentionally)
help these fascists!"
This plea notwithstanding, traffic rose to a high of 13,159 messages on the
21st.
While news of tank movements, demonstrations, and official political statements
was of practical value, it also provided emotional support. When the coup was
finished, and there was time to rest, I received a message from Polina that
said in part "You can't even imagine how grateful we are for your help and
support in this terrible time! The best thing is to know that we aren't
alone." That message paid me 1,000 times for the hours spent at my computer
keyboard.
Danger
At the beginning of the coup, memories of the Hungarian revolt, Kruschev's
ouster, the Prague Spring, and Tiananmen Square did not give one much hope.
Had the coup succeeded, the Demos staff and people using their network would
have been in great danger. As Vadim noted in a message to Doug Jones, a
professor at the University of Iowa:
"If these dogs win, for certain they'll throw us in prison --
we distributed the proclamation from Yeltsin and the Moscow
and Leningrad Soviets throughout the entire Soviet Union,
together with the forbidden communiques from Interfax ...
Greetings from the underground."
Demos headquarters is in a small building near the Kremlin. The KGB knew of
RELCOM, and had they decided to, they could have easily shut the network off
early in the coup. When a friend asked why they didn't, Polina replied "Thank
Heaven, these cretins don't consider us mass media!" After the coup, she and
others speculated that the KGB was generally passive because they were not
confident the coup would succeed.
Sensing danger, the Demos staff arranged for backup computers to substitute for
the vulnerable headquarters machine if necessary. On the 20th at 8:30 PM
Moscow time, Vadim sent this message to Doug Jones:
"Yes, we already prepared to shift to underground; you know --
reserve nodes, backup channel, hidden locations. They'll have
a hard time catching us! Anyway, our main communication line
is still open and it makes us more optomistic."
They not only hid the computers, many people left Demos headquarters and
communicated from their homes and other locations. Polina told me:
"Don't worry; the only danger for us is if they catch and
arrest us, as we are sitting at home (valera is at Demos) and
distributing all the information we have."
When the coup was finally defeated, George Tereshko, broadcast the following
thanks for the risk taken by the Demos staff:
"When the dark night fell upon Moscow, RELCOM was one source of
light for us. Thanks to these brave people we could get
information and hope."
Of course, for now, the story appears to have had a happy ending. At 3:07 PM
on the 21st, I received this from Polina:
"Really good news. Right now we're listening to Radio Russia
(without any jamming!); they told that the eight left Moscow,
noone knows where ... Hard to believe ... Maybe, they've
really run away?"
And on the 22nd at 1:31 PM she wrote:
"Now Vadim and I have to do our usual work (that's so nice!)
and Valera and Mike Korotaev went to sleep. They were on duty
the whole night. Now there is celebration in Moscow. We just
watched president Gorbachev on TV."
RELCOM in Peace Time
In the past, a network like RELCOM would have been prohibited in the Soviet
Union. Like any communication media, it is incompatible with repressive
dictatorship. Gorbachev's Glasnost made RELCOM possible, and in one year, it
became a significant segment of the Soviet communication infrastructure.
Part of the reason for RELCOM's success is the fact that postal and telephone
service in the Soviet Union are poor, making electronic mail very attractive.
Another element of their success is that they use low-cost, appropriate
technology. The primary technology used by RELCOM is the voice phone system,
low cost modems, and standard personal computers. The final element in their
success is the people at Demos. They are very skillful as technicians and as
entrepreneurs (Demos is 100% free enterprise), yet they are different than
their counterparts in the United States. They are more idealistic and less
competitive. If they were in the US, my guess is they would either be graduate
students in computer science or they would be driving BMWs and sipping Perrier.
As such, RELCOM may be a good model for other countries with poor
telephone and postal systems, little capital, and well educated,
motivated young professionals. Networks like RELCOM, probably
using satellite technology, may change the face of the earth in
peace time as well as helping to keep the peace.
[Larry Press is Professor of Computer Information Systems at California State
University at Dominguez Hills. He has visited Chile several times, most
recently as an organizer of the EIES held last July. The week before the
coup, Press co-chaired a conference on human-computer interaction in Moscow.
While there, he spent several days visiting the Demos Cooperative, which
operates RELCOM, an important Soviet computer network. During the coup, he
relayed news to his friends at Demos.]